Do you have the habit of shopping at foreign online store, especially those from the west? I do, like many others, looking for bargains, stuffs that are special or not easily available here.

I do have an extra small habit though.

Whenever the order arrives, I like to observe the way it is being packaged, and minor details (some are not minor, really) that would make a difference.

Let me share two examples from my own experience recently, Threadless from US and Book Depository from UK.

Note: Read the end of this post for latest update.

Acmamall.com started off years ago as an online book retailer in Malaysia and Singapore. Since not long ago, flowers and beauty products are being introduced, as well as shipping to the rest of Asia, Europe, Americas and even Africa!

Their catalog is quite extensive by Malaysia's standard, but personally I am not very impressed with their pricing. Take this book for example, which they are selling at RM 109.16 after "20% discount".

Again no, not the blogshop. If you are currently selling on blog, eBay, Lelong or forum, you might want to explore Trosworld to setup your own branded store for free. At the very least your customers will be able to navigate and browse all your offerings with ease.

A little bit on the background, Trosworld was just being officially launched about 1-2 months ago. This year is no doubt the year of e-commerce SaaS in Malaysia, with the launches of webShaper, SMilDS.com and now Trosworld. And I bet there are a few more out there.

Continued from SMilDS.com - Smile Everyday?


You must be wondering how they define E-Commerce 4.0, right?

No, not the blogshop. Neowave - one of the major e-commerce software vendors in Malaysia, has just introduced webShaper bizStore, which modeled upon Software as a Service (SaaS).

This is an interesting development of local software companies adapting SaaS model to deliver their products or services over the web.



Taking advantage of SaaS (multi-tenant architecture), potential sellers need only to pay RM 199 monthly (current promotion price at RM 150) to setup a online shop with their own branded domain name.

After months of rumours, iPhone 3G is now officially available in Malaysia with Maxis, well at least according to its corporate site hours ago.

The details are no longer accessible now, but you can still check the snapshotted rate plans here.

UPDATE: It seems to be back up, and Maxis has astonishingly made some adjustment to the earlier release.

12 months contract: iPhone 3G price from RM 1,080 to RM 2,290

Year 2008 is approaching the end and thus it would be inconclusive not to mention, in what I believe, the best web initiative in Malaysia for this year.

YouthSays

YouthSays, one of the YouthMalaysia project, is undoubtedly the hottest online youth community in Malaysia now. It is open to any Malaysian age 35 and below, and claims to have more than 60,000 members at the time of writing. Quite an impressive feat given that YouthSays is only about 7 months old.



Crowd pulling factor? YouthSays is well publicized, being helped by the fact that it rewards members in cold hard cash. Members can earn money by answering surveys or inviting friends. It might be just peanuts, but it is still attractive enough for non-blogger netizens who might not have the experience (and thrill) of earning cash online.

You might be thinking, what's so great about that? Here comes the CIA, ooops TYI I mean...

Looking for best hotel deals? CompareHotel.com.my is offering one-stop service for you, by aggregating the best deals from top travel sites, wholesale online travel companies, travel agents and hotels. In short, it is a hotel (price) comparison service.

Does the branding looks familiar to you? No, it's not affiliated:

No, not the virtual buddy. Zappos is definitely holding this principle well and a role model for anyone doing business online.



Zappos is an US-based electronic commerce service established in 1999. It specialize in footwear and then extended its catalog to clothing, bags and accessories. According to the figures revealed, one out of every 40 people in the United States is their customer, and 75% of purchases come from returning customers. Impressive huh?

IKEA Malaysia website has been launched for some time now. It is good to see that IKEA is localizing their presence in each countries, rather than just having one international site with multi-language to serve all markets.

If you are not an interior designer, you can try out the IKEA Home Planner software (download here, Mac OS is not supported though). Look at what I have got here for my dream workspace:

Malaysia largest bank off and on the internet, having nearly one million active users on their banking portal, is finally making a step into Web 2.0 arena.

Maybank have just launched a blog, and more importantly a revamp of their existing cluttered Maybank2u site, being branded as M2U 2.0 (currently in beta).

Green Packet is definitely hot in the news nowadays thanks to its WIMAX roll out in the country through Packet One. They are also having an eye on the content business through the launch of the social network site, Ruumz. Quite an exotic name by Malaysia's standard huh?



After so much rumours among the industry insiders, it is finally making its debut although it is still in beta currently. You can only join by invitation at the moment.

China has one, Germany has one, but not without controversies...

Here comes our very own clone, MyPal:

Not exactly an identical clone. Obvious thing missing is the application platform, which is mainly the success criteria of Facebook. I am not sure what is Lelong's intention on launching this recently (July '08), without any sort of interactivity between this clone and its famous online auction site.